I’m working on a video exhibition with the public art organization No. 9 Contemporary Art & the Environment. It’s called Four Directions, and its opening will coincide with the opening of Evergreen at the Brickworks, Toronto.

SUNDAY September 26, 2010 – December 31, 2010

The exhibition is designed to reflect the mandate of the public art organization No. 9: that contemporary art can stimulate positive social and environmental change. The group video exhibition features four powerful environmentally themed video artworks, each screened inside one of four restored drying kilns (long tunnels). The kilns are located at the North end of the Heritage Brick Factory, Building 16, which is a 52,000 square foot space, the largest building on-site.

A still from Lessons of Darkness. Image: uashome.alaska.edu

The works to be screened are Lessons of Darkness by the legendary German filmmaker Werner Herzog and three Canadian artists:

L’Or blanc/White Gold, a No. 9 commission by Isabelle Hayeur
The Cyanide Flats: 50?54´15´´N / 95?20´20´´W, a No. 9 commission by Val Klassen
Waterspeak by Dana Claxton

The exhibition’s goal is to acknowledge manmade environmental destruction and to offer alternative ways of thinking about a healthy earth that suggest re-growth and healing. The exhibition will present a journey for the viewer from Herzog’s bleak documentation of Kuwait’s burning oil fields to Isabelle Hayeur’s curtain of softly falling salt crystals, followed by Val Klassen’s still signs of hope within a ravaged landscape, to Dana Claxton’s mesmerizing plea on behalf of water.

Without being overly didactic or preachy, together the three works will provide a response to Herzog’s Lessons of Darkness. As the viewer progresses through each tunnel, he/she will witness environmental devastation, followed by works that engage the emotions to suggest mindfulness, respect and honour for our environment.

Check out No. 9 Contemporary Art & the Environment, HERE.

I saw Julian Schnabel introduce his film Before Night Falls, about the Cuban novelist Reinaldo Arenas when it had its North American premiere at TIFF in 2000; the artist and filmmaker shuffled up onto the stage in his bathrobe and slippers and gave a highly entertaining Q and A.

Artist and filmmaker Julian Schnabel. Image: salon.com

This year, he’s back - for his upcoming show at the AGO, which opens September 1st - and will introduce his Carte Blanche selection, which is Hector Babenco’s film Pixote (1981), about child criminality and survival in the Brazilian slums and Before Night Falls. Schnabel will introduce both screenings, which will be followed by a discussion.

Surely, a screening and talk not to be missed. If Schnabel is an excellent artist, he is surely an equally excellent filmmaker.

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The Walrus has a good interview with Simon Brault, author of No Culture, No Future, the new book that exploresthe fact that the arts are a necessity, not a luxury.

As he puts it, the book is a “call to action” - for Brault, it’s up to everyone to communicate with one another to promote and encourage the arts.

Image: cormorantbooks.com

Here is some of what Brault has to say in the interview:

“When you look in the papers, the conversation around arts and culture is reduced to the economy or to presenting a particular cultural product. It’s not a broad conversation about what arts and culture bring to people — to children, to people who are lonely, to people who have a need for expressive life.”

“Every human being has a relationship with the arts. The fact that we are ignoring that — and trying to lecture people as if they are completely ignorant, as if they are completely disconnected from everything we believe in – is a big problem.”

“I read, I think, I write, but mostly I act. And I try to act with people around me. I still believe that ideas can change the world. I know it can sound like a very romantic vision — but it’s not so romantic because things are changing… ”

Author Simon Brault. Image: cormorantbooks.com

I haven’t read the book, but I’m looking forward to it.

If you want to know more on Brault’s thoughts vis a vis the arts in Canada (and the world), buy the book HERE.

From this morning’s Ottawa Citizen, we learn that Shirley Thomson, the former director of the National Gallery of Canada, has died.

Jana Sterbak, Vanitas: Flesh Dress for an Albino Anorectic, 1987. Image: makefive.com

Thompson is known for her staunch defence of the gallery’s decision to purchase Barnett Newman’s Voice of Fire for $1.8 million in 1988. You can’t help but smile remembering the hou-ha that that caused, considering today’s $100 million plus prices that we see at auction. She also acquired the famous “meat dress” by Montreal artist Jana Sterbak.

From the article, which quotes her as saying “We know that some of the cutting-edge Canadian artists, by the very nature of their innovation, are not necessarily going to please a broad expanse of the public. However, we are morally and esthetically committed to these artists.”

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Since I haven’t been away - yet - this summer, my favorite summer show is in Toronto, at one of my favorite galleries.

Flavio Trevisan, The Three Dales, 2010. Image: flaviotrevisan.com

With the mayoral debate gearing up and the fact that Torontonians seem obsessed with urban issues and how to evolve our ward-centric patchwork quilt of a city, this show is particularly relevant.

Flavio Trevisan: Studies of a New Past
Diaz Contemporary
Through August 14, 2010

Hurry - don’t miss it, it’s definitely worth seeing in person.

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I came across THIS link from the art:21 blog today – in it, Anna Milandri talks about what’s been going on, art-wise, in Berlin recently.

Baby Ghost From the 1900s Says Beat It With Your Chain, 2009, by Berlin-based Montreal painter Wil Murray.

New York’s Triple Canopy put together six evenings of art-related discussion, including one titled “Print and Demand” in which several publications, including Berlin’s 032c(a great issue, btw) and Vancouver’s Fillip, where they discussed the changing nature of print and online publishing.

It seems that some intriguing ideas came out of the discussion, including the idea that readers – and particularly commenters with something to say – should consider contributing.

I agree, and I welcome contributions from regular commenters on VoCA. Whether you agree with my posts or not, it’s the only way to get a real dialogue going among this community of readers. Of course, I’d be happy to feature perspectives other than my own.

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Just saw this:

“Steven Shearer…will represent Canada at the 54th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia 2011 (Venice Biennale), from June 4 to November 27, 2011. The only international visual arts exhibition to which Canada sends official representation, the Biennale is among the most prestigious contemporary art exhibitions in the world.

Steven Shearer’s drawings of metal-heads. Image: wecantpaint.com

The artist was chosen by a national selection committee comprised of senior contemporary art curators from across Canada and formed by the National Gallery of Canada (NGC), organizer of the Canadian representation for the 2011 Biennale. The NGC’s Senior Curator of Contemporary Art, Josée Drouin-Brisebois, will organize the exhibition of Steven Shearer’s work.”

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I just - finally - got the press release announcing the world premiere retrospective of El Anatsui, the African artist whose shimmering, decadent textiles made from metal bottlecaps are stunningly beautiful.

The artist El Anatsui. Image: ethicarts.org

This is going to be THE exhibition to see in Toronto, if not Canada, this fall. I’m sure of it.

El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote to You about Africa
October 2, 2010 to January 2, 2011 at the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

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I went to the preview opening of the excellent new exhibition by famed American minimalist artist Sol Lewitt at the Toronto artist-run centre Mercer Union last night.

The installation at Mercer Union. All images: VoCA

Another view of the installation.

Lewitt’s wall drawings, which are painted directly on walls, and for which buyers purchase the instructions, caused quite a sensation back in the 1960s, one collector recalled, because “no one was doing anything like that”.

The exhibition was originally mounted in the gallery in 1981, and was recreated as part of the 30th anniversary year of Mercer Union. Click HERE for a very interesting review of the original show by John Bentley Mays.

There’s also, in the back room, some vitrines displaying books on Lewitt’s work that offer fascinating insight into the work. The catalogues came from the collection of a local collector and are a fantastic compliment to the wall drawings.

How did Sol Lewitt come to show his work at Mercer Union in the first place? The story, as told to me by Mercer co-director York Lethbridge, goes like this:

“One of (Mercer’s) original board members, Michael Davey, had met Sol LeWitt while completing graduate studies in Scotland in the ’70s. LeWitt and Davey kept up correspondence, so when Mercer Union was starting out, looking for diverse programming, Davey invited LeWitt to do a project at 29 Mercer Street (our first gallery space). Given the board was bootstrapping operations, LeWitt agreed to work with the artists on the board to install the work, so he came to Toronto with his assistant and future wife Carol Androccio and completed the drawing in 2 days with help from then board members Peter Blendell, Michael Davey, Jamie Lyons, Robert McNealy, Jaan Pooldaas, Judith Schwarz, Renee van Halm, Cheryl West and Robert Wiens. LeWitt also showed work with the David Bellman gallery, who, I think, helped pay for his travel.”

Some of the catalogues on display.

Apparently, this installation is only the second time the work has ever been shown. It would have been appropriate for the AGO or the Power Plant, but as a former board member of MercerUnion, I’m proud that Mercer is looking so good.

I encourage people to support the upcoming exhibitions spaces in Canada – Mercer’s mandate is to show innovative projects by living contemporary artists, and artist-run centres are essential spaces run by artists for artists that support the exhibition of new work where there isn’t always yet a strong market.

The show will be on July 10 - August 28, 2010, and the opening party is tomorrow (Saturday) from 2 - 5 pm, with a talk by Anthony Sansotta, an expert draughtsman who worked with Sol LeWitt for many years at 3 pm.

Please click HERE for Mercer Union’s website, where you’ll find more info and upcoming exhibitions etc.

The Canadian Art Foundation––where I work––recently hosted Peter Eleey, curator at PS1 Contemporary Art Center, for a lecture when he was in Toronto.

David Lamelas, Limit of a projection I, 1967. Theatre spotlight in darkened room. Image: spruethmagers.net

In THIS excellent video, Eleey, formerly curator at the Walker Art Centre in Minneapolis, gives a fascinating account of his curatorial influences when preparing The Talent Show, a recent exhibition for the Walker, that “examines a range of complicated relationships that have emerged between artists, audiences, and participants in light of the competing desires for notoriety and privacy that mark our present cultural moment.”

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